Archive for February, 2009

We will be at CPAC 2009 on March 26-28. If you will be attending we would like to meet you … please send us a note below or post a message on TBV’s facebook page. For those interested, here is the agenda:

While President Obama has consistently articulated that the current economic crisis presents the unique opportunity to make needed “changes” … the Dems in Congress, without objection from Obama, have not yielded to Obama’s campaign promise of “going line by line” and instead choose to take a 1,000+ page bill, one nearing $800 billion, out of conference committee after both chambers voted on their own versions, and effectively ram it down the throats of the American taxpayer without giving their elected officials time to read the bill.

Tom Daschle may not have become Health and Human Services Secretary, but he sure got his fingers into the stimulus bill and helped pen some provisions affecting the freedom you enjoy when going to the doctor, or more importantly, your doctor’s freedom in treating you. These provisions are the foundation for what will be a huge government bureaucracy controlling health care in the United States. Not surprisingly, the Democrats were not very forthcoming with the fact this was hidden in THIS bill, and clearly don’t feel it would help get it passed since not a word has been said about it.

The health-care industry is the largest employer in the U.S. It produces almost 17 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product. Yet the bill treats health care the way European governments do: as a cost problem instead of a growth industry. Imagine limiting growth and innovation in the electronics or auto industry during this downturn. This stimulus is dangerous to your health and the economy.

Bloomberg reports on what has been found, and not reported on until today:

Why are the following hidden in the stimulus bill?

Because Democrats understand that sneaking it in is easier than making the case to the Americna people, here is why …..

1. A provision in the stimulus creates a new bureaucracy, the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology, that will monitor treatments to make sure your doctor is doing what the federal government deems appropriate and cost effective. The goal is to reduce costs and “guide” your doctor’s decisions (442, 446).

2. Hospitals and doctors that are not “meaningful users” of the new system will face penalties. “Meaningful user” isn’t defined in the bill. That will be left to the HHS secretary, who will be empowered to impose “more stringent measures of meaningful use over time” (511, 518, 540-541)

3. A provision in the stimulus creates the Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research (190-192). Daschle’s 2008 book (“Critical: What We Can Do About The Health Care Crisis) explained, the goalis to slow the development and use of new medications and technologies because they are driving up costs. He praises Europeans for being more willing to accept “hopeless diagnoses” and “forgo experimental treatments,” and he chastises Americans for expecting too much from the health-care system.

4. The stimulus bill will affect every part of health care, from medical and nursing education, to how patients are treated and how much hospitals get paid. The bill allocates more funding for this bureaucracy than for the Army, Navy, Marines, and Air Force combined (90-92, 174-177, 181).

Daschle says health-care reform “will not be pain free.” Seniors should be more accepting of the conditions that come with age instead of treating them. That means the elderly will bear the brunt. Medicare now pays for treatments deemed safe and effective. The stimulus bill would change that and apply a cost- effectiveness standard set by the Federal Council (464).

2. Age Discrimination in Treatment ?

The Federal Council is modeled after a U.K. board discussed in Daschle’s book. This board approves or rejects treatments using a formula that divides the cost of the treatment by the number of years the patient is likely to benefit. Treatments for younger patients are more often approved than treatments for diseases that affect the elderly, such as osteoporosis.

Senate offices field calls ALL DAY from constituents. They have been indundated with calls to vote NO on the stimuls bill by a huge margin over calls calling for the YES vote. It is just a phone call …. call as many senators as you like and let them know they are redefining hypocrisy by spending OUR MONEY while everyone else and most companies are downsizing and trying to live within their means.

Roll Call announced at 1pm eastern that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid believes he has the 60 votes he needs to overcome a fillibuster attempt and bring the bill to a vote to pass it. This “crap sandwich factory” of a bill is an insult to any tax-paying American. While taxpayers are spending less, companies are forced to downsize, the Democratic Party controlled federal government believes they should GROW by spending more money on ridiculous pet projects (see 2 posts below). The backlash is going to be huge, and we should let our elected officials know that they should not be on the receiving end …. (HERE ARE THE “SQUISHY FOUR” THAY MAY FLIP WITH THE DEMS)

– So, re-sodding the entire National Mall (6,359,760 square feet), at 60 cents/square foot, costs $3,815,856.00 Again, I bet there is a volume discount to be had on that much sod, but I digress.

– The stimulus bill that passed the House allocates $200,000,000 for sod and seed for the National Mall.

So, subtracting the cost of sod, that leaves $196,184,144 to pay the labor for installing the sod. So, say you offer $100,000/year for sod-layers using the remaining $196MM after paying for sod, you will create 1,961 jobs for laying this sod.

Pretty ridiculous, but it gets better:

– At 146 acres, this re-sodding means 13 people assigned to each acre that needs sod. Remember, if we pay less than $100K/year to the sod-layers, we can have more than 13 people per acre per year … but I’m thinking 13 is enough, they can rotate “one month on, eleven months off”, with an extra to help out if someone gets injured.

– For each of the 146 acres, $200MM breaks down to $1,369,863 budgeted for each acre …. FOR SOD.

– “Never let a serious crisis go to waste. What I mean by that is it’s an opportunity to do things you couldn’t do before.” – R. Emanuel

Let the Democrats and President Obama take full credit for this “Stimulus” Bill. – Trust, But Verify

Why call it a “stimulus” bill when “spending” also begins with an “S” and both contain eight letters, not to mention “spending” seems more consistent with what is going on here. Enjoy the money flying out of the taxpayer’s pockets … and going to ………

– $30 billion, or less than 5% of the spending in the bill, is for fixing bridges or other highway projects

(As Peter Orszag, the President’s new budget director, told Congress a year ago, “even those [public works] that are ‘on the shelf’ generally cannot be undertaken quickly enough to provide timely stimulus to the economy.”)

– $600 million more for the federal government to buy new cars. Uncle Sam already spends $3 billion a year on its fleet of 600,000 vehicles. Most of this will be to replace the cars with vehicles using “alternative fuels”.

– $200 million to re-sod the National Mall in Washington, D.C.

– $276 million to fix/replace computers at the State Department (really?, most computers are made overseas these days, even Dell).

– $7 billion for modernizing federal buildings and facilities (why is this in a “stimulus” bill when it is clearly a spending project that could create savings over the long term .. it doesn’t stimulate anything in the short-term)

– $1 billion for Amtrak, the federal railroad that hasn’t turned a profit in 40 years

– $2 billion for child-care subsidies

– $50 million for that great engine of job creation, the National Endowment for the Arts

– $650 million to repair dilapidated Forest Service facilities (noble, but not a short-term economic stimulus plus few can even afford a vaca).

– $400 million for global-warming research

– $2.4 billion for carbon-capture demonstration projects

– $252 billion is for income-transfer payments — these are not investments that arguably help everyone, but cash or benefits to individuals for doing nothing at all. There’s $81 billion for Medicaid, $36 billion for expanded unemployment benefits, $20 billion for food stamps, and $83 billion for the earned income credit for people who don’t pay income tax. While some of that may be justified to help poorer Americans ride out the recession, they aren’t job creators and belong in a separate bill, not one being sold as a “job creating” package.

– $650 million on top of the billions already doled out to pay for digital TV conversion coupons

– $8 billion for renewable energy funding

– $54 billion will go to federal programs that the Office of Management and Budget or the Government Accountability Office have already criticized as “ineffective” or unable to pass basic financial audits. (including the Economic Development Administration, the Small Business Administration, the 10 federal job training programs, and many more).

– $66 billion to the Department of Education .. that is more than the entire Education Dept. spent just ten years ago. Again, what jobs will this stimulate? (Some $6 billion of this will subsidize university building projects. If you think the intention here is to help kids learn, the House declares on page 257 that “No recipient . . . shall use such funds to provide financial assistance to students to attend private elementary or secondary schools.” Horrors: Some money might go to nonunion teachers).

Consistent with what the WSJ recently opined, the larger fiscal issue here is whether this spending free-for-all will become part of the annual “budget baseline” that Congress uses as the new floor when calculating how much to increase spending the following year, and in future years. Democrats insist that it will not. But it is hard to believe that Congress will cut spending next year on any of these programs from their new, higher levels. What is likely is that this “emergency” and “job creating” spending will become a permanent addition to federal outlays — increasing pressure for tax increases in the bargain.

“When anyone has to issue more than a waiver a day on any standard, it ceases being a standard and becomes a joke. The no-lobbyist rule has become just that — an ironic joke on all of the saps who fell for Obama’s populist pap over the last two years.”

Too bad the American media hasn’t kept as close an eye on Barack Obama and his promises to clean up government as the Times of India has. Noting that Obama has already issues 17 exceptions to his no-lobbyist rules in the first two weeks of his inauguration, they wonder how it could worse:

It is easy to project yourself as a clean politician after making your debut in South Side Chicago with buddies like Rahm Emanuel. US president Obama has appointed more than 17 lobbyists after talking big on anti-lobbyist Governance and rooting corruption out of the American Government.

Dreams are dreams. Facts are facts. President Obama is surrounded by corrupt lobbyists ready to sell America cheap. …

Take the example of the newest exposure of doubletalk from Obama! After calling for clean Governance, he appoints a Treasury Secretary who “forgot” to pay for his ‘business tax’ for years! Tom Daschle, a top lobbyist in Washington, who has amended his U.S. tax forms to pay back taxes with interest, is now Obama’s best choice for America’s chief health official. …

Would you believe, Obama had to issue 17 waivers on his own rule in less than two weeks for allowing lobbyist enter his Administration and control Governance of America!

Well, that’s Hope and ChangeTM, isn’t it? When anyone has to issue more than a waiver a day on any standard, it ceases being a standard and becomes a joke. The no-lobbyist rule has become just that — an ironic joke on all of the saps who fell for Obama’s populist pap over the last two years.

Why do we have to go to the Times of India to hear how many exceptions to this rule Obama has invoked? If the Bush administration had publicly imposed such a restriction on itself and then quietly ignored it, we’d hear endless editorials about Bush’s hypocrisy and the influence of the rich and powerful on his administration. We heard exactly that when Dick Cheney assembled a group of advisors, without government positions or enforcement authority, to help him build an energy policy during the first term. Some watchdog groups went to court to force Cheney to reveal their names so that they could make that exact point.

But Obama appointing lobbyist after lobbyist to government positions, with enforcement power, despite his promise not to do that at all? Crickets chirp among the American media. I guess they’ve outsourced their Truth-to-Power divisions to India.